


pieces of sky

by nanami



Category: THE iDOLM@STER
Genre: Gen, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-15 00:48:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13019742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nanami/pseuds/nanami
Summary: If idols are stars, like you'd often thought when you were a child, then Miho, and Rin, and Mio are the sun, bringing light to the worst days and a warmth that lingers long after they've left your orbit. If idols are stars, like you'd often imagined when you were younger and more sure of yourself, then you're an asterism faded from existence, a lost piece of the sky no one's ever known the name for.





	pieces of sky

**Author's Note:**

> will i ever write a happy uzuki fic? sources say "not right now"

_Think of idols as stars._

When you were young, when your eyes still had the bright innocence of a child naïve to the world, the books you read and the albums you begged your mother to buy had shined, just like stars. They were tales of princesses, of girls who found their spotlight and sparkled as if they had belonged all along. They were tales of happiness, of love, of lost and found, spun through song and weaved with a mastery of lyrics that you could only dream of back then.

But mostly, they were tales of idols.

You had always dreamed of that feeling, dreamed that the same warmth radiated from your own fingertips. That maybe, someday, that spotlight would shine on you, on your plain face and stringy hair and crooked smile, and maybe, despite how normal you were, despite how boring you were, you could make others smile like they had made you smile.

_You should know when their light is going to fade, when they’ll be hidden by the clouds._

(When you were young, no one had told you that the spotlight hides an unbearable, scorching flame.) 

 

* * *

Your smile falters.

Miho looks at you, the expression on her face struggling to stay lit, and when your knees knock against each other and your vision turns fuzzy, you can't seem to find the strength to smile back at her. When you try to squeeze her hand to tell her _it's okay, I'm fine, I'm just a little bit nervous_ , your fingers tremble like they've been frozen in a storm.

She doesn't drop her gaze, and when you tell her, "I promise I'll do my best!", you're struck by just how wrong it sounds, how fake it feels, and you flail like a marionette with its strings cut.

The only thing you've ever had to call your own is your smile. When you look at Miho, her smile is brighter, and the calm that rushes over you from her gentle reassurance ignites such an ugly jealousy in you that your chest hurts and the world starts spinning before you start tumbling over your feet, the feet that could never carry you through a dance number like Mio's can, and you yelp with a voice that's harsher than Rin's ever has been, and if New Generations is only as strong as its weakest link then _you're always the weak link—_

Everyone's looking at you. You want to shrink, to tell them to look away, but you learned on your first day that an idol always draws attention, that an idol must always be graceful. So instead, you muster the best smile you can (it's always your worst smile) and tell everyone, "I'm sorry. I'm just a bit dizzy right now."

Miho ushers you over to a seat, and it's more than you deserve. From the distance you can see your Producer bowing to the photographer, and that feeling rises up in you again, the ache in your heart that you've felt for so long—it’s your fault, it's always been your fault, the weak link, the girl who's only ever been able to offer a crooked smile.

If idols are stars, like you'd often thought when you were a child, then Miho, and Rin, and Mio are the sun, bringing light to the worst days and a warmth that lingers long after they've left your orbit. If idols are stars, like you'd often imagined when you were younger and more sure of yourself, then you're an asterism faded from existence, a lost piece of the sky no one's ever known the name for. 

 

* * *

You tell your producer that you're starting over.

He asks you, "Shimamura-san, are you okay?"

You swallow back the sickening feeling just beneath your heart: the words that always try to leak in sour tones but stay stuck in your throat when you try to force them out. "I'm fine!" you exclaim, a little too loudly. "I just want to learn how to dance better. Maybe there's something I'm missing. But I'll be back soon."

His expression flickers for a moment, and then he smiles, a chiseled mask of stone that looks as real as you feel. "If you really believe that, then understood."

There's always something you're missing, a pillar too high for you to reach. When you reach out to grasp it, it slips through your fingertips like shadows in the sunset.

 

* * *

The training room is empty on the day of your first lesson, and you can't help but think back to the girls in your first classes that faded away, lost to your memory in the sands of time. Their faces are indistinct, and you wonder if they've forgotten you, too.

 

* * *

_Uzuki, are you feeling okay? We missed you today. Today was the first day I could meet up with Mio in a long while. It felt lonely without you there._

You hope it did. You hope, for once, that your absence was felt like a blank space in the sky, that when you were gone, everyone wondered why.

You write back, _Thank you for worrying, Rin-chan. But I'm fine. Please don't feel lonely without me._

You've never been one to lie, but it's been easier lately, a second-hand skill you've never needed to hone before now.

 

* * *

The teacher of the training course is one you recognize, from all those months ago, when you were still just a fledgling girl hoping for her big break. Now that you've gotten it, now that you've gone on stage and bathed under the spotlight, seen fans waving their penlights to your voice, she must wonder why you're back.

She doesn't ask any questions. You don't think you could answer them even if she did.

Her training is simpler than it used to be, and it's more kindness than you can take. She claps her hands and announces, "Okay, Shimamura, time for a break."

But you tell her: "I'm fine. Let's keep going."

She raises an eyebrow at you; you recognize that look from back then, when her students would tell her they didn't need any more instruction to be an idol.

(Those were the students that never returned to class. You wonder, then, if they're happier than you are.)

The silence in the room weighs heavy on your mind, but your trainer simply shakes her head and presses play on the boombox again. You dance to the rhythm that she claps to like a heartbeat hammering in your ears.

It's the first time in weeks—years, maybe—that you've felt alive.

 

* * *

Mio and Rin show up at your training school after the teacher has left, drop by a set list that you never even asked for, and demand that you follow them to the park.

You remember this park. It's quiet now, and the winter season has brought a chill to the grounds and stripped the trees of their leaves. You remember visiting it in the throes of spring, when the sweet scent of cherry blossoms filled the air, when children played on the jungle gym just like you had when you were younger and you could smile like they did. You remember how you first met Rin here, how you had talked about your Producer, and that you were going to be idols.

You remember that warm feeling in your chest when your Producer told you that your smile was the reason he scouted you. Those honey-soaked words that had seeped into you as you looked in your mirror and maybe, for once, believed that your smile brought something special to someone's life.

You remember that, in this same park, Rin told you that your Producer had selected her for her smile. The same thing he told you.

But now neither of you are smiling, and Mio looks at you, glassy-eyed, and your cheeks flush with embarrassment for making them worry. You're always doing this: you're always making people worry, making them whisper about you in hushed tones when they think you can't hear. The look on Rin's face is filled with anger, and you don't know if you've ever seen her actually angry before, but of _course_ you'd be the one to cause it.

Behind the anger is something else, though, and you don’t know if you’ve ever seen that, either, something deeper hidden with the mask of such a harsh emotion, so raw and powerful.

When you duck your head into your scarf, Mio speaks up, voice scratched. “Shimamu,” she starts, and when she stares at you the glass of her eyes thickens, “it’s okay.”

You feel the tears prick at the corners of your eyes, and you try to blink them away before they spill. But despite yourself, they start to trail on your cheeks, and you don’t know—for once, you don’t know why you’re crying, because shouldn’t you be _happy_ , shouldn’t you be happy for your friends, for Rin’s singing career and Mio’s newfound love for acting? Shouldn’t you cheer them on like you promised you always would, when you became idols together?

It’s not okay.

Has it ever really been okay?

They found something they’re passionate about, and, you tell yourself, it’s not fair to take that away from them, to drag them down with you when you fall. When you watch them on stage, they sparkle like you’ve always wanted to, like you always wanted to believe you could, but the more you see them the more you realize that you _can’t_. You haven’t found any talent to call your own, and like a tree with the last of its leaves hanging limply from a weak branch, it feels as though you’re running out of time.

The tears keep spilling, and you don’t know if you could stop them, even if you wanted to. But for once it feels good to let them fall, a basin overflowing with emotion. Because for all the times you had smiled and said that you were fine, maybe you never were.

 

* * *

You know your producer never bought your excuses, your reasons for starting at the training building again. Maybe, before you started with New Generations, he would have believed them then, but he knows you too well by now. You don’t know how he knows you so well when you hardly know yourself any longer.

But you didn’t expect him to show up and pick you up from school of all places, and through your surprise you clench your fists and hold the tears back again, because it feels like he’s treating you like a child, a glass case of emotion ready to shatter at the first crack. You almost want to ignore him, to pretend like you don’t need the help, but something in you gravitates toward him anyway.

Your subconscious pulls you forward. The words for help are rusted in your throat, but maybe he'll still understand, the same way he always has.

Either way, you’re not entirely sure you really want to leave him with the (very angry-looking) guard, either, eyeing him suspiciously like some kind of criminal. This is how you first met, and something about it makes you nostalgic enough to call out to him.

When you’re in the car heading back—and you know where he’s taking you, but the thought makes your chest clench and your knees knock, so for now you’re trying not to think about it—he asks you, “How have you been?”

Truthfully, you don’t know how to answer that. You don’t think he’d believe you if you told him that you were perfectly fine. So you mutter a quiet, “I’m okay,” because even though it’s not the truth, it doesn’t feel like a lie right now, nestled comfortably in your producer’s car, with his deep voice always honest and calming.

Maybe, you think, you’ve missed this feeling.

“Did you get the set list?” he asks, looking up into the rearview mirror, the creases under his eyes all the more obvious in his reflection. He looks older and more gaunt than you remember, and more than anything you hope it’s not because of you, always the missing star in the sky.

“Um, yes,” you stutter, playing with your fingers to avoid looking at the reflection of his impossibly heavy eyes. “Rin-chan and Mio-chan dropped it off the other day…”

“I see,” he replies, and that’s that.

You don’t know if you appreciate the silence that follows.

Neither of you try to break it, either, until you’re stuck at a stoplight, the rush-hour traffic emblematic of downtown Tokyo leaving the car idling. The rain patters on the window in watery mosaics, and you’re almost too distracted to notice the concert hall across the way. But to fill the silence—to think of anything other than where you might be headed—you say, “I remember that place.”

“Hm?”

“It was where I saw my first concert,” you continue, drawing clouds on the car window with your breath. “That was… why I wanted to be an idol.”

He doesn’t comment on the past tense.

“Do you want to stop by?” he says in reply, and you tense up.

“Can we?” you ask in lieu of a _yes_ or a _no_ , because you’re still not sure how you’ll react, seeing that same stage you saw so long ago, the stage that stayed in your dreams like a phantom afterimage of the sun long after you’d closed your eyes.

Your producer nods, and flicks the turn signal on. You curl back up into your coat again, a protective layer against the cold and whatever else you’re feeling now, a twisted up, complicated emotion filling into your chest.

 

* * *

He leads you through the backstage of the concert hall, and it reminds you of the last show you helped out with, where everyone else shined on stage and you were a dim, dying star in a cluster of constellations, passing your light to everyone else before you burnt out. The concert hall is empty, and your footsteps reverberate around the barren hallways, and you have never felt so self-conscious of something so small before.

(But then, you’ve been feeling self-conscious of an awful lot of things, lately.)

You reach the wings of the stage that you once saw from below, the stage you once waved a penlight to that you bought for the first time in your life. Something heavy like weariness rests on your heart the closer you get, your producer’s small flashlight leading your way and keeping you from tripping on the stairs.

When you finally stop, you’re just close enough to see the lights of the stage filtering into where you stand. This close to the spotlight, you can feel it burning your skin. But when your producer cranes his neck to look at you, you force a smile on your face, and you know it’s the least convincing smile you’ve ever flashed in your life because he turns around fully and shines the light between you.

The sudden light makes you squirm and curl back into yourself. “It doesn’t feel right.”

“What doesn’t?” he responds, the first words he’s said in quite a while. It feels like he’s been waiting for you to speak up.

“The light.” You drop your face to avoid his eyes, but you can see his fingers clench around the flashlight, jerking its light closer to your knees. “I don’t know if I belong under it.”

“Shimamura-san—”

“Everyone else,” you start, the words spilling like water from a broken dam, “everyone else—they’ve all found something that makes them _belong_ , but I—”

You can’t even get a sentence out between choked sobs. You’ve held them back for long enough; the tears have started falling again, the salt hitting your lips and making them curl, and the sobs that wrack your body feel like precious gasps of air while you’re drowning. You clutch at your mouth to keep from crying out, because if an idol must always draw attention to herself, then you’ve never truly been an idol.

Your producer is silent, but his hand tightens around the small flashlight again.

“—but I don’t think I’ve ever had anything, and I’m scared to find out if I’m right—because what if I—” You take a deep breath to steady yourself, but it doesn’t do much good; your fingers tremble at your sides, and when you next inhale it’s a shaky, labored wheeze. “—what if I spend all my time searching and searching for something that makes me special, and I find _nothing_? What if I don’t find anything?”

“Shimamura-san,” he says again, the edges of his voice softened.

“What if… What if I don’t find anything?” you repeat, all the sorrow drained from your voice and replaced with something more akin to exhaustion, the sound of a star burning out.

You aren’t smiling now. You don’t know if you’ve been able to smile for the past month, or maybe you never knew how in the first place. But you can try, try to force this down again with a weak smile like you’ve always done, so when your shaking fingers reach up to the corners of your mouth, skin slick with tears, you instinctively pull them up in a facsimile of a smile.

“If you don’t think you can find anything right now,” says your producer, cutting through the silence between you like a newly-sharpened knife, “then we will stay with you until you do. _I_ will stay with you until you do.”

It makes your tears well up again until they’re streaming down your face. You can’t—you can’t ask him to hold himself back, that’s selfish and awful of you and you’re the weakest link, the dullest star among them, and it wouldn’t be fair—but part of you _knows_ that he means it, and part of you wants to let yourself believe—“But I—I…”

“I believe in you. Even if you don’t believe in yourself.”

_I believe in you._

The words knock the wind out of you and it feels like you’re falling, falling, falling from your missing piece of sky, and when your producer asks you if you’ll move forward with him, move forward and believe in what’s possible, your hand grips his before you blink back your tears.

You remember the scent of cherry blossoms in the wind when he told you that your smile was why he chose you. You don’t don’t remember how you smiled at him back then, but for a moment, a spark runs through and curls your mouth up again, breaking through the lines of sobs long dried.

You remember the crisp spring air against your cheeks when you believed him then, and you remember the light feeling in your chest when you finally let yourself dream.

The flashlight’s beam shines at the ceiling as he lifts the corner of his mouth with his finger, a smile propped up and blooming like seeds on a trellis. For once, when you feel something like hope find its way onto your face, you let yourself dream again.

 

* * *

The paper star in your pocket feels like the weight of the world is held in the small piece of sky you’ve called home, no longer a hidden, dim star in the night, but a newly born star under the spotlight. Your knees still knock together—you don’t know if you could stop them right now, under the sea of pink penlights, waved in a rhythm as they wait for your song to start, and your producer said he’d _believe in you_ and looking at this crowd, you think they might believe in you, too.

You touch your pocket gently, feel the outline of the star against your side. Warmth radiates through your fingertips when you pull them away to touch the mic, gripping it tightly between your hands. The spotlight feels like the sun on your skin, warm and friendly and familiar.

You take a deep breath.

“I’m Shimamura Uzuki, and I’ll do my best!”

 

* * *

 

_The stars are still there, even when they’re hidden by the clouds._

 

* * *

You think of the tales you were read when you were young. The stories of princesses, of girls who found their spotlight and sparkled as if they had belonged all along. By now, you’ve forgotten what their smiles looked like, painted in storybooks and captured in photographs hidden in skies clouded over.

But when your song is finished, and you smile like you always could, you think you might have remembered.


End file.
